Big Question Curriculum
Why have we designed a Big Question curriculum at Freshford?
Our Big Questions are designed so that children experience connected thinking and learning throughout their journey through our school.
Our mixed age classes offer the perfect opportunity for connected, reflective learning for each child and as a whole community. We believe that real learning comes through first-hand experience, listening to child voice and we see the advantages of mixed age classes being that we can create a fresh team of learners each year.
Curiosity and Excitement
Freshford’s enquiry-based curriculum is fertile ground for growing cultural capital and self- awareness, for a child knowing themselves as a learner, for curiosity and excitement around thinking and reasoning.
We believe that reading, writing and speaking as well visual literacy and language of mathematics are vital tools for understanding and having agency in the world. Thus our rigorous teaching and learning in English and Mathematics are key.
Communicating our learning
The interlinked, cross-curricula nature of that learning are brought together in what we call our ‘mastery pieces’ that are beautifully and carefully written and meaningfully presented. They are vehicles for communicating the connections in learning.
Sharing our learning
Several things happen: the child glows with pride as they share these with their parents, the child is deeply knowledgeable about the scope and relevance of what they have learned in connection to their Big Question, they are continually developing high level skills because they are ambitious to communicate their thinking through the writing and visually through art and design. They know that learning is about how concepts connect rather than how national curriculum subjects are covered.
